The She Spot

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4Care

The Nonprofit that Knew Too Much

The very first step to getting people to support your cause is getting them to care. Most of us in the nonprofit world got into this line of work because we care. We care about keeping our air and oceans free of pollution. We care about improving education and leveling the playing field for low-income kids. We care about protecting our right to free speech.

But sometimes a funny thing happens on our way to making the world a better place. The deeper we get into our issues and the better experts we become, the worse we get at communicating with our audiences. We start dropping cryptic acronyms and technical terms. Giant pandas and blue whales become “charismatic mega-fauna.” Statistics replace human beings. ...